A light emitting diode (LED),-a type of semiconductor light emitting device, is a semiconductor device capable of generating light of various colors according to electron hole recombination at p- and n-type semiconductor junctions when an electrical current is applied thereto. Compared with a filament-based light emitting device, a semiconductor light emitting device has various advantages such as a long lifespan, low power consumption, excellent initial driving characteristics, and the like, and accordingly, demand for semiconductor light emitting devices continues to grow. In particular, recently, a group III-nitride semiconductor capable of emitting short-wavelength blue light has come to prominence.
An LED generally includes a structure in which an active layer is disposed between n-type and p-type semiconductor layers, and in this case, a p-type dopant included in the p-type semiconductor layer may be diffused into the active layer to degrade performance. Namely, in an LED, the quality of the active layer serving as a light emitting region in the LED is of significance, but the dopant element diffused into the active layer during a p-type semiconductor layer growth process may degrade crystal quality in the active layer or hinder the realization of an intended emission wavelength (or an intended excitation wavelength), efficiency, and the like.
Thus, a need exists in the art to provide a semiconductor light emitting device that minimizes the amount of p-type dopant diffused into an active layer to prevent crystal quality degradation and performance degradation.